


steady, woman, won't you come on down (i need you right here on the ground)

by okaynextcrisis



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-18 12:05:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11874012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaynextcrisis/pseuds/okaynextcrisis
Summary: Missing scenes (and familiar ones) from That Night on New Caprica





	steady, woman, won't you come on down (i need you right here on the ground)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lolcat202](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lolcat202/gifts).



> Title borrowed from "Beggar in the Morning" by the Barr Brothers, which i totally recommend as a soundtrack, btw

The rest of the crew was off as soon as their boots hit the dirt—to explore the settlement, or catch up with old friends, or just get themselves a well-deserved glass of New Caprica’s home-brewed finest—but this planet holds only one particular, pertinent interest to the Admiral, and he’s in no hurry.  Or rather, he’s enjoying the feeling of being in no hurry, of a rare moment in time stretching out before him, empty of demands or responsibilities…except for the actual frakkin’ groundbreaking, that is.

He might be, just a little, luxuriating in the unfamiliar sensation of having something to look forward to, something that has nothing to do with the ceremony that supposedly brought him here.

The rest of them will probably make regular trips down to the surface, but the commanding officer of the fleet (or what’s left of it, particularly what’s left of it) can’t expect to be able to often leave his post, and he wants…he wants to remember this.  He wants to take the warm kiss of the sunlight on his face back to the cold of space, to keep something of the gritty sand underfoot, the merciful cool of the breeze, the faint scent of trees (he’d forgotten, already how green has a smell, how fragrant air can be when it’s  _real_ , and not the canned, recycled stuff that fils his lungs in space) for the long months ahead.

He wants to take off his boots, and so he does.

“I didn’t expect to find you playing in the sand.”

Bill Adama opens his eyes.  “It’s not sand,” he retorts, as though he is not surprised to find her here, just a few feet from where his ship touched down.  Maybe, deep inside, he isn’t.  “It’s alluvial deposits.  This used to be the river mouth.”

Laura Roslin seats herself beside him, hugging her knees, close enough that her arm brushes his.  “And you just had to take off your shoes and  _play_  in the alluvial deposits,” she teases.  “How romantic.”  

Her smile is wide and inviting and—maybe—just a shade flirtatious.  She’s wearing a bright red dress, and Bill can’t help but be taken aback, even all these weeks since Baltar’s inauguration, to see her in anything but one of the three suits she would rotate, every third day, like clockwork.  Her hair is longer, now, and looser, tumbling over her shoulders in a mess of red-gold curls.  He is still startled, somehow, taken aback, by the difference between the president Laura Roslin and the woman now beside him.  President Roslin would never have smiled with such ease; it is impossible to picture a moment in which she would have had the time, much less the inclination, to laugh at him as he dug his bare toes into sand, a moment in which a thousand crises wouldn’t have been wailing for their attention.  Bill has met with President Roslin countless times—in CIC, in his quarters, in the brig, on her deathbed, even—but it occurs to him that this might be the first time he’s really meeting Laura.  

The sunlight—and there is something to be said for real sunlight, after all, a brightness that the dim bulbs in his quarters cannot hope to replicate—glints off the red of her hair, already grown lighter from her four months on this planet.  Looking at her now, it is almost possible ( _almost_ ) to forget the weeks he spent watching her waste away, as every hour seemed to sap away at her strength, her vitality; the nights he spent sleepless, dreading a call from Cottle, telling him that she had slipped away; the terrible moments when it seemed that the experimental treatment he’d gambled would save her life would stop her heart instead.  

“That’s a nice color on you,” he says, more gruffly than he means to.  He’s speaking of the vibrant shade of her dress, but he means so much more than that…and far too much to say out loud.  He catches himself staring and looks away from her, towards New Caprica’s makeshift town square, already full of people awaiting the groundbreaking ceremony.  He is still unsure of their relationship, of what they are to each other now that they are no longer Admiral and President.  With the President, he knew where he stood...at least most of the time.  With Laura…

“Thank you,” she says, smoothing the crimson fabric over her shoulders.  He pulls his gaze away.

“It’s good to see you, Laura,” he says.  And it is.  

“You, too, Bill,” she says, her hand lightly brushing his arm, her touch as warm as the sun.  

He catches her eye and her smile widens.  She shakes her head, still smiling, and Bill knows he’s been caught out.  He doesn’t care.

“When do you go back to Galactica?” Laura asks.

“Tomorrow,” Bill answers, watching a handful of sand trail through his fingers.  “Today I have the honor of watching Baltar ‘break ground on a better tomorrow,’” he quotes from the press release.

Laura snorts.  “Ten cubits says the shovel he lifts today will be his first  _and_  his last.”

“Are you planning to have him killed?” Bill asks dryly.

Laura laughs.  “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

A smile tugs at Bill’s lips.  If he were Baltar, he’d be watching his back.  “We should get over there,” he says, looking out over the square.  “They’ll be starting soon.”

“The Admiral has to get over there,” Laura corrects.  “The ex-President has better plans.”

Bill can’t quite suppress, even to himself, a clear pang of disappointment.  Of course Laura has better things to do than to waste one of their rare holidays on his tired company.  It occurs to him that in the months he’s spent orbiting this planet, Laura has been building a new life for herself, and he has no idea what it might be.  Of course she has plans for the night.  He should have known that red dress wasn’t for him.

He nods, swallowing his regret.  He wonders if Laura would invite him to her wedding, or if he’d hear about it second-hand, months after the fact.  “In that case—” he begins.

“Will I see you after the ceremony?” Laura asks.  Her cheeks are flushed from the wind.  She leans in conspiratorially and lowers her voice.  “I have something for you.”

“Of course,” Bill manages.  

Laura gets to her feet.  “You don’t want to be late,” she says.  “Baltar tends to take things…personally.”

With a last smile, she walks away, her red dress vivid against the dull grays and olives of the tents, of the ever-present mud and sand of this planet.  Bill watches her go before turning away and heading, dutifully, across the square.

* * *

 

She is easy to find in the crowd, her red-gold hair like a beacon in a sea of unfamiliar faces.  He hadn’t known there were this many strangers in the fleet, this many voices he can’t put to names…  

“There you are!” she exclaims, accepting the glass that he holds out to her, filled with a pale, watery brew, the very best homemade liquor New Caprica has to offer.  She thanks him with a smile, and Bill wishes he’d thought to bring a bottle of the better stuff from Galactica down to the planet with him.

_Next time_ , he is afraid to say…or even think.

But Laura is already ahead of him, taking his arm, leading him away from the crowd and pulling him behind a tent.  He watches as she pulls something out from inside the folds of her dress.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Bill says, staring down at the two long, tightly furled cigarettes in Laura’s palm.  

“The leaf grows here,” Laura explains, as though it is the most natural thing in the world for a woman he once put behind bars to be offering him a smoke.  Her wicked smile relives him of the need to inquire further into just what this plant is supposed to do.

“You had to listen to Baltar speak,” she points out dryly.  “You’ve earned it.  Besides, it’s only fair that you get  _something_  good out of this planet before you leave.”

Her voice is pure reason, and her eyes are a dare, and maybe that’s why Bill allows himself—just this once—to put aside his responsibilities, his position, his ever-present consciousness of the need to stay vigilant.  The Cylons could attack today, he supposes…kill them all…but…

Besides, he reasons, being offered a joint by Laura Roslin has to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

He pulls out his father’s lighter, and her pale green eyes flash with amusement.  “Thank you,” she says, as he lights her cigarette, held out with practiced ease between two fingers.

“I never pegged you as a smoker,” he says, raising his own to his lips and inhaling deeply. To his surprise, it’s good: sharp, almost bitter, but with a lingering trace of sweetness.  

“A long time ago,” Laura says, her voice soft, her gaze moving beyond him, focusing, he imagines, on some private memory, one he knows he will never share.  

There are so many questions that he wants to ask her:  _is she happy here, is she safe, is she hungry, does she resent him still for having stood between her and the Presidency?_   But the words are too weighty, too loaded, and he knows that if he asks, she will lift an eyebrow, make some wry comment, change the subject, and the moment between them will have been broken.  Laura Roslin will always close ranks in the face of enemy fire.  

He moves to safer ground.  “When did you quit?”

She tilts her head to the side, considering.  “I only ever really smoked late at night, when I couldn’t sleep.”  A sardonic smile pulls at her lips.  “Then the worlds ended, and I didn’t have time to sleep anymore, so it didn’t matter.”

“Admiral!”

Felex Gaeta approaches them, and, without speaking, like guilty children, they both hide their hands behind their backs.

* * *

 

As the sky darkens, Laura drags him over to the glorified tent she’s determined to turn into a school.

Sky.  Bill Adama has lived most of his life on ships, underneath low ceilings and heavy bulkheads.  The vast expanse above him now makes him feel exposed, vulnerable.  It is…not an entirely unwelcome sensation, he finds.  There’s a feeling tonight, in the bonfire smoking drifting through the air, in the crisp bite of the twilight breeze, in the pounding of his heart (not from battle, or imminent death, but something else,  _something else_ ) that says that anything is possible, that this dingy little planet might hold something fresh, something new.

He’s a little brave, and he doesn’t let go of Laura’s hand, even after they’ve pushed through the dirty canvas to stand inside this cramped space she’s obviously so proud of.  

“They’ll be more desks, of course,” she’s saying, gesturing at the rows of mismatched tables facing the front of the tent.  “I’d steeled myself to do without a chalk board, but would you believe one of the cargo ships was carrying school supplies?”  

He can barely make out her face in the darkness of the tent, but he doesn’t need light to know that dangerous smile on her face.  “I  _may_  have leaned a bit on the former president title when I requisitioned it.”

Back on Galactica, when the election was still a fresh wound, oozing new reminders of her defeat at every move, Bill had worried that Laura would never be able to let go of her anger and frustration, that she’d grow small and bitter down on the surface, watching as that shred of a man undid everything she’d so very nearly sacrificed her life to achieve.

Seeing her now, a part of the community, planning for the future, so obviously at home here in her new life…it’s a relief to him.

And it hurts a little, too.

Maybe he’s the one who still can’t let go of something that belongs in the past.

“You’ve done a wonderful job here,” he says instead.  “Your students are lucky to have you.”

She tilts her head to the side, the dim light and the leaf blurring her edges into the darkness all around them.  “Well,” she says philosophically, “there’s no vote for schoolteacher, so they had no other choice.”

Laughter bubbles up from her chest, clear and sparkling, and maybe it’s the leaf, the darkness, this one night…

He means to laugh, and instead his is very gently tracing her bottom lip with his thumb.

Maybe it’s the chill in the air, or the faint music they can still hear from the party, or whatever hull varnish they’re making the liquor out of these days…but instead of pulling away, she pulls him though the flap of the tent to a little sandbagged alcove, and then pulls him down on top of her.

Maybe it’s the bonfire smoke, still unfurling hopefully into the sky, or the knowledge that tomorrow Bill will go back to being the Admiral, and Laura the schoolteacher, that tonight is a grace, a mercy, a blessing not to be bestowed twice…or maybe there’s something here for him, after all.


End file.
